Its late night TV... the shows some scheduler sticks before and after or against
Letterman,
Leno or other late night comedian type. The
voyeur date shows...
Change of Heart,
Blind Date,
Chains of Love,
Temptation Island,
Shipmates... the list goes on and on.
I admit it, I watch them from time to time. Its like a car crash, you just have to look. Go surfing through the channels, and eventually it shows up again.
The worst part of being a hopeless romantic and stumbling across these shows normally brings a sense of disappointment. There is the rare occasion that both of the individuals are jerks, but those rarely happen, and when they do the final conflict between them is more a relief than anything else.
More often than not the guy is being a jerk. I can't help but wish that I was the guy there. The conflict of hubris enough to believe that I could have done better - treated her better and the lack of self confidence - knowing that that if given the opportunity, most likely, I would be too afraid to even take an offer to be there and try the show for myself. I admit it, when it comes to relationships, I wear rose colored glasses - I desperately want to believe in true love and romance and all that other mushy stuff.
Occasionally, things work out just right... for them. And while part of me is happy, that indeed sometimes things do come out rose colored, part of it is tinted green with envy.
The inspiration for this comes from stumbling across Shipmates the other night to see a self-absorbed musician ignore the young woman he was with while paying attention to other women. She was brought to tears through a combination of her own insecurities and his lack of consideration. And upon finishing up this node, I am promised with trailer for another one where things go wrong shortly after the initial meeting.
This brings me to one of the points that is nagging at me - the... injustices that appear on these shows are not the results of writers playing with our emotions and made up characters - these are real people. Real people have real feelings and living real events. Somewhere out there, someone needs a shoulder to lean on - I just wish I could find her... and I hope she has a shoulder too.